Friday, May 18, 2012

Slowly Settling

Hooray for artistic talent that is beyond my comprehension...

So I am officially in-processed and I start my new gig on
Wednesday!For the first time in my
life, I have my very own, massive office with a huge window and a couple of
delicious vintage-y leather chairs, and endless wall space to hang art of my
choosing! Soooo very excited!! I also passed my driving test and have obtained
my British license, which is a relief.Not that I’m looking forward to navigating massive speeding roundabouts,
but apparently I’m legal to do so.

We move into our place on Tuesday, which I am also
incredibly excited for.No more pooing
the dogs on leashes!Our furniture and
things may arrive sooner than I expected as well, which will bring me much joy.I am particularly excited for our bed and bedding,
my good knives, my magical garlic roller and drawers and drawers of art
supplies.It’s funny the things we end
up missing the most.My husband is of
course excited for his reunion with the 52” flat screen and blu-ray
player.And most of all, we will be
hugging the grill and slinging tasty slabs of meat and veggies all the live
long day.Stove top meat just doesn’t
cut it anymore I guess.

The last couple of weeks my mind has also been consumed by
the development of my shop on Etsy.This
has been something that has been on my mind for a long time now, since my
discovery of Etsy a couple years ago.I’ve
never been good at marketing myself or talking about my work, I think mostly
because I don’t feel like I can ever explain it well enough to convey what
prompted the creation in the first place.I also have always felt strange about profiting off a gift/talent that I
was born with.It can be quite the
conundrum.But as I get older, I feel
less strange about it and have more of the mindset that – if I can create
something that brings someone else joy, and they are willing to pay to own it,
then that begins to construct the dream that everyone has of getting paid to do
what you absolutely love to do in life.So
that is the direction I’m trying to head.Another slight obstacle is the fact that I love to paint massive
paintings on thick-edged canvases, which results in outrageous shipping fees
for myself/the buyer.So I’ve been
working on ideas for products that serve a purpose, are functional, beautiful,
depicting of my style, which I enjoy creating and are affordable for the buyer
and inexpensive to ship.Enter the
silk painting class that I had been hunting for for months – the weekend before
we left Phoenix. Perfect.I fell in
love, and painting super rad and beautiful silk scarves fits all of the above
criteria.So while I’m still going to be
painting giant canvases as I see fit, I am also transitioning into 8”x56” silk
painted scarves as well.I’m thinking
about starting another page within this blog that is solely dedicated to the
artistic process once I get my studio set up in our new place.I think it will be really interesting to be
able to look back on pieces and the making of as I move forward with this.It will take me a bit to build up the
inventory of course, there is a steaming and hand-washing process that comes
after the painting is done, but I’m really looking forward to the whole
process and the finished product and of course seeing the shop itself come
together.